“I sing songs of lust and depravity / That’s the only child or songs that come out of me / I apologize but I can’t stop / The devil’s gonna run me until the day I drop”. You can suspect Johnny Dowd of all kinds of sins, but a lack of self-knowledge is none of them. And if Twinkle Twinkle (2018) had gone so far in its idiosyncratic madness that it felt like an endpoint, then Family Picnic is a cautious return to something more conventional terrain, even though the ‘average’ is always out of reach will stay. And that’s a good thing too.

The above verses are from “Thomas Dorsey”, a song from Chainsaw Of Life , released by Dowd in a previous decade with Jim White. An ode to the great pacemaker of gospel music, and at the same time a nod to his own depravity, or that of his songs. It is full of Dowd: observer and participant in one, character in his own songs, and the image he hangs this time is now also regularly one of broken illusions and total absence of a civilized layer of varnish. The title track does start with an idyllic image that has meanwhile become part of the American psyche , the perfect family, but soon Dowd presses you on the facts: “How much emptiness can you swallow”?

What distinguishes Dowd from other prophets is of course that he does not bring that message with a doomed, serious or stupid irony, but with self-mockery, vicious insight and a weakness for absurdities. Dowd is a relative of the fairground customers, of the marginal outsiders who suddenly surprise you with a barrage of historical tidbits, with extras who seem to run away from the nasty stories of Jim Thompson. Here they are waltzing (“The Man Of Your Dreams”, “Four Gray Walls”), juggling their sins and a certain resignation ( “Im not the man of your dreams / That’s obvious to all” ). They know how bad things are.

Dowd once again takes care of most of the work, but receives support from old acquaintances Mike Edmondson (a regular sparring partner decades ago) on guitar and xylorimba and the equally famous Kim Sherwood-Caso on backing vocals. Humming and whining keys are still popping up, just like plastic beats, making it seem like here and there Dowd is still aiming for a hip hop fired from the roots (the title track, “Shameless”, “Let’s Have A Party”), but the effects are a degree or two less alienating than in the triptych That’s Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse, Execute American Folklore and Twinkle Twinkle. Maybe that hint could already be found in the artwork, with the wood engraving by Mike Massingham.

In our review of a previous album, we claimed that you need a figure like Dowd to keep a genre fresh, and that goes just as well for Family Picnic . Despite the craziness and madness, these songs make it clear that Dowd knows better than anyone what makes songs tick, what the essence of a good song is, and how despite all these interventions he keeps it afloat or nonchalantly in the air with that broad grin. Short instrumental“Hoodoo” sounds like work by Freddie King and Link Wray is being fetched by a Fisher Price mangle, but it is very contagious. The same applies to the widely spread blues of “Vicksburg”, which highlights a chapter from the American Civil War, the “Walking The Floor” and “Little Jimmy” built with kitschy synths, or the surprisingly cool ballad “Dream On” with its nice sleepiness. This man controls his art.

With Family Picnic you will not win back the curious passersby who dropped out a few albums ago , Dowds music is too capricious and quirky, but because the songs are so damn well put together (after two listenings, it sounds like edits of long forgotten classics an indefinable past) and following each other at such a fast pace (fourteen in 37 minutes) is perhaps the man’s most accessible record of the past decade. “I want to be a star”he sighs completely at the end of “Conway Twitty”. To be taken with a grain of salt, but at the same time you would like him, if only because his combination of ruthless honesty, witty and consistent insanity has so much to say about the crazy Feast that human interaction is so common. The fool of the company often has the last word.

Johnny Dowd plays on April 19 in Het Ijle Land (Ghent). More (foreign) date on the website . Can not be missed.

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